REVIEWS Archives - Page 166 of 548

Lash: A Pulsating New Play About Going Out Out! – Pleasance Courtyard

14Aug

By Gill LewisNo Comments

Scotland

Lash: A Pulsating New Play About Going Out Out! – Pleasance Courtyard

Boost your adrenaline and immerse yourself in this part gig, part theatrical experience, which proves to be a treat to the senses. This is storytelling that stirs up memories of long, booze-soaked late-night club shenanigans and regretful drug fueled streams of consciousness. There’s nothing more exhilarating than getting ready to go ‘out out’ on the town after a long, boring, mundane day at work. With the night threatening to go one way, or the other, with the line between reality, drugs, and booze blurring the vision threatening all of the senses, concepts which this unapologetic production thrives on. Written and directed by Phillip Stokes the dark and dingy cobbled Bunker One is the perfect setting for this claustrophobic, loud and noisy piece. We’re hitting the town, big st...

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins – Pleasance Courtyard

14Aug

By Torya HughesNo Comments

Scotland

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins – Pleasance Courtyard

Returning to the Fringe with his third solo show, comedian and clown Garry Starr attempts to perform every Penguin Classic novel in the space of an hour, to save literature from extinction. This seems like a bold claim; however, this is a man who has previously performed every style of theatre and all of Greek mythology and managed to make both incredibly funny. This year he has even branched out into children's theatre, albeit with an underlying narrative about mental health. Starr arrives onstage naked, save for a top hat, a dinner jacket, an Elizabethan ruff and a pair of flippers. He builds an instant rapport with the audience, riding the waves of laughter before gently encouraging some participation. There is a great deal of skill involved in his crowd work, never ridiculing an...

Author, Composer, Soldier-of-a-sort – Greenside @ Riddles Court

14Aug

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

Author, Composer, Soldier-of-a-sort – Greenside @ Riddles Court

Written and performed by Jan Carey, Author, Composer, Soldier-of-a-sort sees Marion Scott present a biography of her relationship with Ivor Gurney by means of their letters to each other and the music of Gurney. Carey masterfully swings between the voices of both Scott and Gurney, giving us a sense of the eccentric personality of Gurney, and the wistful nature of Scott as she reflects on the pair’s friendship. Despite being Carey’s first piece of writing, this play is a true, heartfelt representation of what theatre should be. The audience are taken on a journey of reminiscence that leaves us with both a hollowness and fullness that only an exceptional show can conjure. With humour and sadness, we are given a glimpse into a beautiful relationship and the themes tha...

The Grill (Jokes about ovens) – The King’s Arms

14Aug

By Lou SteggalsNo Comments

North West

The Grill (Jokes about ovens) – The King’s Arms

In the small studio theatre above a Manchester pub, the pressure is on. Two chefs, drafted into a prison kitchen due to a staff strike to cook the Death Row inmates’ final meals. Welcome to The Grill where the stakes are high and the steaks are non-existent, our soon-to-be-deceased favouring garden salads and soup instead before they depart this plane of existence. Directed by Adam Cachia, our two chefs Tom and Wally filet and flambé their way through a blackly funny script that explores everything from class wars, culinary memories and how to fleece a Tesco meal deal. There are some spicy one liners, lovely wordplay, and great blocking of the two main actors that builds in some enjoyable physicality. There are a few fluffed lines here and there but both cope marvellously with the...

Elizabeth I: In Her Own Words – theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall

14Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Elizabeth I: In Her Own Words – theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall

Created with Elizabeth I writer/scholar, Doctor Carole Levin and starring Tammy Meneghini as the titular queen, this show invites you into a private evening audience with Queen Elizabeth I. Near the end of her reign, she reflects upon its major events and the people she was closest to, told through "her own words", from documented letters, speeches, passages from her own hand, though these are very much augmented by others' words, including letters from Mary Queen of Scots and the Spanish Ambassador, and multiple speeches from the plays of William Shakespeare. This makes sense in the context of the creation of the piece, ie to accompany a visiting exhibit of Shakespeare's First Folio to the campus of the University of Colorado Boulder, though it might lead the casual viewer to...

Gwyneth Goes Skiing – Pleasance Courtyard

14Aug

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Gwyneth Goes Skiing – Pleasance Courtyard

One day in 2016, Gwyneth Paltrow went skiing. The Hollywood starlet and celebrity sex toy saleswoman collided on the slopes with retired optometrist Terry Sanderson. A high-profile lawsuit soon followed. On the day of the collision, Sanderson claims to have suffered life-changing injuries. Gwyneth, meanwhile, lost half a day’s skiing. And Awkward Productions gained the inspiration for this hilarious fringe show. I think I know who the real winners were. Paltrow (Linus Karp) and Sanderson (Joseph Martin) are as different as can be. He likes boiled eggs for breakfast. Gwyneth prefers jade eggs. But they both like skiing. Sanderson falls and is rescued by our angelic Gwynfluencer. She takes him to her chalet for a pep talk and some bone broth. Sadly, things sour between them, and then ...

14Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

In Two Minds – Traverse Theatre

Joanne Ryan’s delicately observed portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship complicated by mental illness is beautifully brought to life by Pom Boyd (The Dry), as Mother and Karen McCartney (A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings) as Daughter. In Two Minds finds insight in the darkness, humour in the pain, and tenderness in difficult family dynamics. But don’t expect dramatic revelations or grand gestures, its simply not that kind of play. Sarah Jane Scaife’s unhurried production for Dublin’s Fishamble is light and practical and dwells on the ordinary rather than the extraordinary, a semi-autobiographical scenario, of Ryan’s relationship with her own mother. Set during the extension of her house, Mother has to share a small studio flat with her grown up Daughter for howev...

14Aug

By Samantha CollettNo Comments

South East

Noises Off – Frinton Summer Theatre

I do love a show-within-a-show, especially when its madcap, farcical and funny - which is how I would describe Noises Off. The story is as follows: a touring theatre company are putting on a show called ‘Nothing On’, Noises Off (the show you are watching) is then the play about the play they are trying to put on and all the drama, mishaps and miscellany that go into a production. Split into three acts, the first act is the show, the second act is the backstage/ behind the scenes view of the first act, and the third act is the calamitous finale at Stockton-on-Tees. It is utter genius. Having missed Noises Off when it was showing in London, I was delighted to be able to see it at Frinton Summer Theatre – and it doesn’t disappoint. The trick (or rather magic) with any comedy, is t...

Three Of A Kind: A New Musical – Paradise in Augustines

14Aug

By Beth EltringhamNo Comments

Scotland

Three Of A Kind: A New Musical – Paradise in Augustines

Three Of A Kind is a new contemporary musical that follows the life of waitress Sam as she attempts to navigate work, love and caring for her sick mother. The score is completely original, and the musical has been created from scratch by Gregor Satti and Rebekah Holly Neilson. Story wise this is a rather classic musical theatre tale: girl who works as a waitress but longs for more meets boy and falls in love. In this tale Sam is having to work to care for her sick mother, when she meets Jamie, she begins to re-evaluate her life, but it seems Jamie is not the only man who intends to enter her life and change her world forever. There are many positive aspects to this show: the musical orchestration and composition being one. It is completely fresh and even without words you can fee...

14Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

BATSHIT – Traverse Theatre

BATSHIT is an unexpectedly funny, but also deeply intimate story of female madness. Created and performed by Leah Shelton (AU) and directed by Olivier award-winning performance artist Ursula Martinez (UK), this is a portrait cum-memoir of Leah’s grandmother Gwen, who was incarcerated for seeking personal independence from her husband in 1960s Australia. It looks like Gwen just didn’t like her husband very much anymore, but in this era that constituted a mental illness which required serious medical interventions. Using Gwen’s actual medical records from the period, real voice over clips, video clips and television interviews, this highly technical show transports the audience back in time to consider what now seems clear, from this evidence, the sexual inequality, of a deepl...